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Updated: June 3, 2025
Brandur was hospitable to such guests as had business with him, and refused to accept payment for food or lodging; but very few people ever came to see him, and these were mostly old friends with whom he had financial dealings. Brandur was willing to make loans against promissory notes and the payment of interest.
Since his daughter's marriage, Brandur kept a housekeeper and one farm hand, a young man whom Brandur had reared and who, it was rumoured, was his natural son. But that has nothing to do with the story. When Brandur had reached a ripe old age, there came a winter with much frost and snow.
Is it not an honour to be asked to save a whole district from ruin? Oh, so all this is being done to honour me! said the old man, roaring with laughter. Perhaps you believe me to be in my second childhood. Not at all! Old Brandur can still see beyond the tip of his nose. The cold-heartedness shown by the old man's laughter at the distress of his fellowmen roused Jon's ire.
But things are in a pitiful state, said Gudrun, what with the hay shortage, almost everyone is badly off, and not a single farmer with a scrap of hay to spare, except you, papa. Yes, I! answered Brandur. I, a poor, blind, decrepit old man! But what of you? Jon has enough hay, hasn't he? How is that? Doesn't he have enough? Yes, we do have enough for ourselves, admitted Gudrun.
For a while there was silence, as if each mistrusted the other and wondered what was in the air. Brandur stood there with one hand resting on the haystack, while he thrust the other into his trousers pocket, or underneath the flap of his trousers. He always wore the old-fashioned trousers with a flap, in fact had never possessed any other kind.
His countenance was as cold as the sky in the evening after the sun has set, and the hard lines in it resembled the streaks in the ice on rocks and ledges where the sun's rays had shone that day and laid bare the frozen ground. Brandur entered the house, while Jon mounted again. They scarcely said a word of farewell, so angry were they both.
He could see nothing laughable about the desperate situation in the district. Are you then going to refuse to let us have the hay, refuse to sell it at full price, with the Parish Council guaranteeing payment? he asked in a tone that was angry, yet under perfect control? Is that your final answer? Yes, responded Brandur. That is my final answer.
There may be a poor growth of grass and a small hay crop; there may be a volcanic eruption and the ashes may poison the grass, as they have done in former years. Now, do you understand me? So saying, Brandur tottered off towards the house to indicate that the conversation was at an end.
I hope for a change for the better with the new moon next week, and mark you, the new moon rises in the southwest and on a Monday; if I remember right, you always thought a new moon coming on a Monday brought good weather. I did, conceded Brandur. When I was a young man, a new moon coming on a Monday was generally the very best kind of moon.
A few days later he could have told us, if anyone had been able to communicate with him, whether they are right or wrong, those latest theories on how it feels to die. But who dries the hay in his homefield now? Guðmundur Friðjónsson During the latter part of the reign of King Christian the Ninth, there lived at Holl in the Tunga District a farmer named Brandur.
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